RANKIN, Jeannette, a Representative from Montana; born near Missoula, Missoula County,
Mont., June 11, 1880; attended the public schools and graduated from the
University of Montana at Missoula in 1902; student at the School of
Philanthropy, New York City, in 1908 and 1909; social worker in Seattle, Wash.,
in 1909; engaged in promoting the cause of woman suffrage in the state of
Washington in 1910, in California in 1911, and in Montana 1912-1914; visited
New Zealand in 1915 and worked as a seamstress in order to gain personal
knowledge of social conditions; elected as a Republican to the Sixty-fifth
Congress (March 4, 1917-March 3, 1919); was the first woman to be elected to
the United States House of Representatives; did not seek renomination in 1918,
but was an unsuccessful candidate for the Republican nomination for Senator;
was also an unsuccessful candidate on an independent ticket for election to the
United States Senate; engaged in social work; elected to the Seventy-seventh
Congress (January 3, 1941-January 3, 1943); was not a candidate for
renomination in 1942 to the Seventy-eighth Congress; resumed lecturing and
ranching; member, National Consumers League; field worker, Womens
International League for Peace and Freedom; member, National Council for
Prevention of War; remained leader and lobbyist for peace and womens rights
until her death in Carmel-by-the-Sea, Calif., May 18, 1973; cremated; ashes
scattered on ocean, Carmel-by-the-Sea, Calif.

Bibliography

Jeannette Rankin in
Women in Congress, 1917-2006. Prepared under the direction of
the Committee on House Administration by the Office of History &
Preservation, U.S. House of Representatives. Washington: Government Printing
Office, 2006.